


Don't Mean Nothing By It

by Huggle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Likes To Touch Castiel, M/M, Possessive Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 16:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6762211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a thing, that's all.  A way to get Cas moving, a way to get his attention, a gesture of...of camaraderie or something.</p><p>There's absolutely nothing in it, despite Sam's epic looks of knowing.</p><p>Nothing whatsoever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Mean Nothing By It

The first time it happens, it just happens. It’s nothing; Castiel is still a little unsteady from battling to throw off the influence of a siren. It’s raining outside - so heavy that trying to walk in it is like pushing their way through something solid. Sam wants to just pick Cas up but Dean vetoes it. He doesn’t need anything to remind him of Castiel’s slip-slide down the scale of existence.

Castiel stumbles to a halt just outside the motel room door, looks at Dean like they’ve never met before but Cas knows him from somewhere. He looks lost and confused. Dean pushes open the door, waits, tries not to get impatient. He wants Cas inside, where he can put him to bed, or give him a stiff shot of whiskey or something. He wants in, Sam wants in, because even the short walk from the car to the door has them drenched through to the skin.

“Cas?”

When the angel doesn’t answer, Dean puts his hand in the small of Castiel’s back, not nudging, just...waiting. It seems to be encouragement enough. Cas steps over the threshold and they follow, and Sam wordlessly goes to run a bath.

~~

Three days later, Sam splits them up. He heads to the library to check into the history of The Church of the Reborn. The self-styled ‘pastor’ is either the head of a sex cult operating under the cover of a legitimate religious organisation, or he’s just a complete fruit loop.

Either way, there’s been a rash of disappearances in town since it set up shop, and they can’t take the chance on it being Apocalypse related.

While Sam geeks out, Dean and Cas head to the Church as potential members. The pastor is only too happy to show them around. It looks like any one of a hundred independent religious groups, but Cas is uneasy and that makes Dean uneasy.

It doesn’t help that the Pastor is a little free with his hands. He touches Dean’s shoulder, holds on a little too long when they shake. But it’s Cas. He sits too close to Cas. He puts his hand on Castiel’s arm, even the back of his neck at one point.

The only reason Cas hasn’t done something about it is because they need to question him and he’ll probably be more talkative without a broken jaw.

Dean isn’t so balanced. If the guy puts his paws on Cas one more time, Dean’ll do more than break some bones.

In the end, they don’t find out much other than the pastor and his ‘flock’ are probably luring susceptible people into their group and maybe brainwashing them. 

As they make their excuses and leave, ‘yeah, we’ll think it over’, Dean lets his hand drift down to Castiel’s back, and gives the pastor a glare. 

~~

So after the case that wasn’t a case, they pick Sam up at the library. Dean persuades Cas to hang around long enough to celebrate not having to kill anything or having to toss any clothes because they’re covered in bloodstains – theirs or anybody else’s. 

The three of them end up at a bar, and Dean orders beer and shots. He downs his in record time, skin still crawling from where the pastor touched him. He tips the glass over and rests it upside down on the table.

“Dude, that guy was a freak,” he says, with an honest shiver.

“Yeah, well,” Sam offers. “At least there were no demons. No human sacrifices or whatever. Sometimes I think...I think that Lucifer and Michael could just kick back and let things take their natural course. Same result.”

Dean glances at Sam’s barely touched beer and empty shot glass. “You’re not drunk enough to be starting that shit,” he says. “Try it again it in five.”

“After five of these, I won’t care.”

“Point.” Dean waves to the waitress, and glances round to see Cas isn’t really drinking either. “Fuck, you guys need to ramp it back – seriously, somebody’s gonna call the cops.”

“Sam is correct,” Cas says. “Humans are helping to bring about the Apocalypse – even though they don’t know they’re doing so.”

Dean kicks Sam under the table. If Cas were human – Dean would say he was totally depressed. He doesn’t know what to call it with an angel – an angel who’s found out his family are trying to destroy the world, the very thing he’s been created for is being corrupted, and his Father’s gone AWOL, possibly for millennia, taking parental absenteeism to a whole new level.

Oh, and Cas has never actually met his Dad.

This is not turning out like he expected. He does it almost automatically. His hand finds its place on Castiel’s back, and he supposes it’s as much his place on Cas as his shoulder is for the angel. He rubs a smooth little circle there, and he maybe makes a soothing non verbal little sound.

Sam’s staring at him. Like ‘about to break out the holy water and book of Latin’ staring.

Dean stares back, half daring Sammy to say anything.

He doesn’t, but he keeps watching them for most of the night, until he’s too drunk to watch anything, what with his head resting on the table.

~~

After that, Castiel starts to notice. Maybe it’s because Dean’s doing it more often. They’re heading someplace – a diner, a house where some poor bastard got gutted by apparently nothing, the motel – and Dean’s hand just kind of drifts to where it wants to be. They’re going back to the car...same thing. Sometimes Dean does it and doesn’t know he’s done it.

Castiel starts to look at him. He supposes it’s fair – the first time Cas was half out of it. The second he was really uncomfortable with the Pastor of the Church of the Reborn and Inappropriate Touching. The third he was so depressed Dean thought he’d try to drown himself in his beer.

But there’s an edge to Castiel since that night. Dean can relate. There’s no schedule to this Apocalypse. He and Sam are pretty much fucking with the timetable anyway since it all depends on them, but that doesn’t change the constant tick, tick, tick they can all hear in the background.

Dean knows in at least one timeline, it’s a given that Sam says yes. He just wants to make sure it’s not this one.

Maybe that’s why Cas is so tense, so...brittle. Everything feels like it’s the three of them – four if you count Bobby – against not just Lucifer. Demons. Zachariah and the host. They’re up against several billion people. Apathy. Greed. Hate. Despondency. And if you believe the angels, destiny as well. It’s weighing down on them, and Dean is definitely starting to feel bent out of shape.

Sam sees it all of course, and sometimes he just looks. Sometimes, he smirks. Sometimes, he goes a little cold on them and that bothers Dean the most, because he still doesn’t know what prompts Sam to say yes. A lot of Dean’s time is spent worrying if it’s this or that. Was it the stupid pointless fight over whether to go to one town or another? Did he say something that dredged up Stanford, or Sam’s relationship with Ruby? Was it something really idiotic or was it this? Was it Castiel coming into their....ok, their family?

He doesn’t think it’s that because he knows Sam likes Cas. He’s come to accept Castiel as part of their group. Maybe there’ll always be the boy with the demon blood / angel thing, but Dean believes Cas doesn’t even think of Sam like that now. He hopes not, anyway.

But honestly, Dean isn’t about to stop doing it. At least not until they’re leaving a supermarket where two housewives decided to beat each other to death over a mango. Before his hand is even moving towards Castiel’s back, the angel takes a step to the side, putting himself out of convenient reach.

“Why do you do that?” he asks.

Dean pauses like he wasn’t about to touch Cas. “Uh, do what?”

“That. Put your hand on my back. You do it frequently now.”

He isn’t sure what to say to that. Fact it, he doesn’t know why he does it. “It’s just...you know, a thing.”

Castiel stares at him, the kind that says ‘I intend to stand here and stare at you until you explain this in a way I can understand’.

Dean feels like cursing but it won’t necessarily help. “It’s just a thing, Cas. Like...two guys out for the night, one puts his arm around the other guy’s shoulders. You know, a thing.”

“A gesture of physical comfort. Friendship.”

Dean brightens. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“I don’t see other men sharing this gesture.”

Shit. The problem is Castiel sees mostly everything. He’s sharp and observant and he might not understand half of what he sees, not really getting human nuances unless they apply to Dean – hell, he’d pegged him right that night in the barn – but Dean knows he files everything he notices away. Until someone says or does something, or the opportunity arises to pester an explanation out of Dean or Sam, and then it clicks. 

“Well, everybody’s...you know, different. Does it.... Does it bother you?”

Castiel seems to be turning it over in his head. Finally, he steps back towards Dean and faces the car again. “No.”

That might be ‘no, it really doesn’t’ or ‘no, since I am a self-sacrificing little angel and have clearly worked out that _you_ like to touch me there, I will put up with it,’ but Dean knows to take what he can get.

He doesn’t grin like a loon all the way back to the car, with his hand resting heavy on Castiel’s back.


End file.
